There is a growing concern in the humanities over ‘inhumane’ working conditions and practices that are damaging to scholars and the disciplines they work in. In recent years, tremendous institutional and governmental pressure has been placed upon university departments to show return on investment (ROI) for the scholarship they support.

Introduction This white paper describes uses for usage statistics, altmetrics, and other quantitative and qualitative impact metrics in the context of services for digital special collections (DSCs) and institutional repositories (IRs) stewarded by academic libraries.